Travel Fun: Washington DC and Richmond

When your birthday happens to fall in your husband's busiest travel time for work, you get used to spending your big day in strange places. This year, he had to be in Richmond, Virginia, on Valentine's Day, which means we made a side-trip to Washington, DC.

(Full Disclosure: I'm not really a Valentine's Day person. I think it's silly to shower your significant other in gifts for some random day of the year rather than days that have meaning to you or really, any day you feel like. That being said, I'm always happy for an excuse to have a fun dinner and eat copious amounts of chocolate. Plus, these Ghirardelli Valentine's caramels are worth it. Since my birthday is Feb. 13, I tend to view Valentine's Day as Day 2 of the Woodstock that is my birth celebration. Rock on.)

Anyway, we drove down Tuesday evening, giving us all day Wednesday in Washington, all day Thursday in Washington and Richmond, and then came back Friday (supposed to be Friday morning, but hello stop-and-go traffic all through Connecticut!). The wrench in our plans came when I woke up Wednesday with a terrible cold/flu: achey body, sore throat, stuffed nose, headache. I felt like crawling back into bed and not coming out again until Easter. But I would persevere, my God! Washington, DC! By keeping a pharmacy's worth of medicine, a bag of clementines, and a couple of boxes of Kleenex in my purse, I would have a good birthday yet.

We started off walking the length of Pennsylvania Ave. from our hotel in Georgetown. It was a gorgeous day, and with our ultimate goal of getting to the Library of Congress, it would take us by a lot of the best spots.

Like, say, the White House.

And the Capital building.

Finally, we got to the Library of Congress. It was the first time I had ever been there, which is weird considering my profession. It was as gorgeous, inside and out, as I would have hoped.

We went through a couple of the exhibits before hitting the gift shop (duh) and heading back to our other professional obsession: the Newseum.

 (That's the First Amendment decorating the building's facade.)

We were in love with the Newseum, being the news junkies that we were. Six floors of important news history, everything from original newspapers headlining major events to wreckage of the 9/11 attacks and the Berlin Wall. It was amazing, and took us quite awhile to get through. Thankfully, the tickets are good for two days, so we started Thursday by going back and finishing the job. 

On our way to Richmond, we stopped at my favorite memorial in the greater Washington, DC, area: Iwo Jima. When I first visited in the eighth grade, I don't know why I loved that statue so much, but I did and I still do. Maybe because it shows the good aspects of war - patriotism and brotherhood - and not just guns and violence. Maybe it's because of the sheer size of the thing and how impressive it is. Maybe it's the way it combines a real, live flag with a frozen-in-time statue. Either way, it was fantastic, as always.

We arrived in Richmond early - far too early for our dinner reservations at a local restaurant. So I did what any person today would do: busted out my phone and Googled "things to do in Richmond." There, I stumbled upon the Edgar Allan Poe Museum.

Located in the oldest house in Richmond, the museum is several buildings' worth of various Poe materials - first editions of works, letters he wrote, photos, clothing, etc. etc. It wasn't Earth-shattering, but it was interesting and a fine way to spend $5 and 60 minutes.

Afterward, we had our Valentine's dinner before we actually had to do some work and then embark on our (long) (Long) (LONG) journey north. It was an interesting way to spend my birthday extravaganza, in one of my favorite cities to visit. Plus, there was also this:

Thanks, Georgetown Cupcakes!

Movie Review: The Sessions

Mark O'Brien is 38 years old and paralyzed from the waist down thanks to a childhood bout with polio. He leads a pretty fulfilling life otherwise though, working as a professional poet/journalist from his iron lung, regularly attending Catholic Mass on his wheeled gurney, etc.

Not surprisingly, Mark is a lifelong virgin, something he doesn't seem to think much about until two things bring the idea of sex to the forefront of his mind. One is his brief employ of a beautiful young woman that he soon falls in love with and asks to marry him (she doesn't reciprocate and he has to find a new daytime assistant). The other is an assignment to write an article about sex and the disabled. Interviewing wheelchair-bound folks about their sex lives awakens something in Mark and he does what most people do when they decide they want to have sex: he seeks the counsel of his priest.

With his priest giving him the go-ahead, Mark is put in touch with a sex surrogate, which is apparently a thing and which, despite my most open-minded thoughts and research, I still can't differentiate from just a really kind and patient prostitute (sorry to the sex surrogates out there). Through a handful of sessions with Cheryl, Mark opens up physically and emotionally and gains a sense of independence and confidence he didn't have before. The power of sex!

This movie is based on a true story; Mark wrote a first-hand account of his experiences after the fact. Despite the fact that I still struggle to wrap my head around the existence of sex surrogates, the story was an interesting one and I enjoyed the performances of John Hawkes, Helen Hunt and William H. Macy, not to mention Moon Bloodgood and W. Earl Brown as his assistants (some of my favorite scenes are Bloodgood's Vera killing time with the motel clerk while Mark and Cheryl hold their sessions in a nearby room).

Helen Hunt is up for Best Supporting Actress this year, but I doubt she'll win. I haven't even seen Les Miserables yet but even I know this is Anne Hathaway's to lose. Nor do I really think she deserves to win; I don't dislike Helen Hunt but I find her to be a pretty overrated actress, and she wasn't even the best performer in this movie (give that to John Hawkes, acting while keeping his body in that writhing position). Having not seen Les Mis, my heart rests with Sally Field.

Updated Oscar Viewing List:

Silver Linings Playbook
Lincoln
Les Miserables
Zero Dark Thirty
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Argo
Django Unchained
Life of Pi
The Master
Flight
The Impossible
The Sessions
Moonrise Kingdom
Frankenweenie
Wreck-It Ralph
ParaNorman
Brave
The Pirates! Band of Misfits
5 Broken Cameras
The Gatekeepers
How to Survive a Plague
The Invisible War
Searching for Sugarman

Movie Review: How to Survive a Plague

How to Survive a Plague is a documentary that follows members of the AIDS activist group Act Up during the tumultuous time between 1986 and 1996. With people dying left and right and members of the gay community watching their friends and lovers drop like flies to this terrifying disease, the U.S. government wasn't giving the epidemic nearly enough attention. The mysteriousness of the disease was one thing, as was the stigma of how it was transmitted, and anti-gay sentiments had many feeling like if "these people" didn't make these lifestyle choices, they wouldn't be dying.

Obviously, the focus of the film is on AIDS and its victims, and the treatment of these patients - being turned away at hospitals, having their bodies disposed of in trash bags - is appalling. However, the film is also a lesson in how to get stuff done as activists. While Act Up did the traditional stuff - picketing, chanting, sign-waving, creating human chains to block traffic, holding up effigies of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush - they also had a real game plan. With the help of sympathetic doctors and scientists, they educated themselves on the medical aspects of the disease and various treatments that other countries had adopted. When the FDA and NIH weren't moving fast enough to develop real treatments, they created their own action plan that the federal agencies simply had to adopt. The battle was a long and heart-breaking one and you see some of the activists get sicker and sicker until they die (one of the most heartbreaking parts is when scenes the outgoing guy who dressed as Jesus while they protested the Catholic church's stance on homosexuality and condom usage are followed by the same guy sitting in a wheelchair, having lost his eyesight and hearing and still talking about being grateful for what he has).

There are a few things that stood out to me about how the film was made. Other than showing a few modern-day interviews with key players, almost all of the footage is original from the time - of rallies, meetings, speeches, and more. Another clever tool was how the filmmaker didn't use interviews for a lot of the strongest advocates until the very end, allowing you to think that these guys eventually succumbed to the disease. Some did, but a lot didn't, thanks to the combination treatment plan that served as a Godsend for many victims.

I was born a year before the time period that this documentary focuses on, and so wasn't cognizant of any of the things that were happening with AIDS. I have vague memories of Magic Johnson's announcement, and I remember players being concerned about Magic bleeding on the court because that's how the disease spread. By the time I learned about it in my elementary and high school health classes, these treatments were discovered and I only heard about the prevention techniques - not touching anyone else's blood in elementary school, wearing a condom in high school. Watching this with a filter of the present, I had a lot of strong reactions. One was how far we've come in gay rights. Sure, there is a long way to go, but watching Jesse Helms talk about the abomination of homosexuality on the Senate floor made my stomach turn. There are still those people out there, but in an era where the president is mentioning gay rights in his inauguration speech and each year sees more and more states approve same sex marriage amendments, progress is being made.

The second thing I took away from this was the power of real, motivated activism. The film was called How to Survive a Plague but it could have just as easily been called How to Change the World. Every time I saw footage of one of the street protests, with people laying in the road and blocking traffic, it reminded me of last year's Occupy Wall Street phenomena. But when they showed the meetings where filmmakers and actors and average joes were memorizing glossaries of medical terms in order to educate themselves on the disease and its treatments, you see just how pointless the Occupy movement was. I'm not saying I disagreed with what they were protesting, but their action plan was...well, they didn't really seem to have one, other than to camp out for several weeks. Nice fodder for some memoirs in the next few years but not really a way to get stuff done.

This is the first movie I've seen from the Best Documentary Feature category, so I don't really have anything to compare it to. I'm looking forward to seeing Searching for Sugar Man too. But whether it wins or not, it was a powerful movie that I'm glad I saw.

Updated Oscar Viewing List:

Silver Linings Playbook
Lincoln
Les Miserables
Zero Dark Thirty
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Argo
Django Unchained
Life of Pi
The Master
Flight
The Impossible
The Sessions
Moonrise Kingdom
Frankenweenie
Wreck-It Ralph
ParaNorman
Brave
The Pirates! Band of Misfits
5 Broken Cameras
The Gatekeepers
How to Survive a Plague
The Invisible War
Searching for Sugarman

Book Review: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Oscar Wao is a young man growing up in Paterson, N.J. (home of Giants wunderkind receiver Victor Cruz). A first-generation U.S. citizen, along with his sister, his extreme nerdiness sets him apart from his cursed ancestors from the Dominican Republic. His maternal grandparents and his mother all ran on the wrong side of Rafael Trujillo, the horrendous dictator who ruled the DR from 1930 to 1952. While the previous two generations (and his older sister) all struggled with love and sex in ways that risked their lives and well-being, Oscar is more sheltered, an overweight comic book fanboy who regularly falls in love with girls who don't recognize his existence.

Still, Oscar is tragic in his own way. While he wasn't imprisoned until he lost his mind like his grandfather or burnt with scalding oil like his mother, he was a hopeless romantic, something that caused him great pain throughout his life and was the reason why that wondrous life was so brief.

While the story was an interesting one, I think the way it was told made it that much better. Most of the book is narrated by a third party - not Oscar or his mother or his sister - whose identity you learn about halfway through. In addition to learning about the history of the de Leon family, you also get a crash course in the history of the Dominican Republic, something I knew next to nothing about. And for a book with such serious topics - love, sex, death, rape, depression, desperation - the tone is actually kind of hilarious. Almost all of the DR historical information is relegated to long, opinionated footnotes. The narration is a strange conglomeration of Spanglish with  random comic books, movies, sci-fi and fantasy stories referenced throughout.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was the latest selection for the Snooty Book Club, with its Pulitzer Prize giving it instant credibility. I loved this book, and one of the reasons I did so was because it didn't resort to pretentiousness despite winning so many literary awards. It didn't trip over itself trying to sell its symbolism and Deep Meanings; it had all that stuff but still found a way to be funny and engaging. Despite the fact that it's been 10 years since I took high school Spanish, and therefore, I didn't understand some of the words or phrases, I still found it an extremely easy read that I blew through in a matter of days. I'm interested in checking out This is How You Lose Her, Junot Diaz' collection of short stories that all involve the narrator of Oscar Wao. Despite his straying eyes, I'm a big Yunior fan.